“Can’t I come now?” Sarah shouted.
“We don’t know what’s in the box.”
“Owen Huff is a careful wrapper,” Peter said.
As he started to unfold the bubble-wrap, I saw something bright green trapped in the center like a tree frog in an ice floe.
“My wallet!” I cried.
“Did you lose it?” Peter asked.
“My wallet, my wallet!” I waved for Sarah to come up. “This is the wallet I had when I was your age.”
Sarah was disinterested.
“Here’s my Buckhead library card.”
Sarah was indifferent.
“Here’s a picture of me at Myrtle Beach. Aren’t I hideous?”
Sarah glanced over.
I clutched the wallet to my chest. A missing piece of childhood had returned like a message in a bottle.
“Here’s my lucky silver dollar,” I said, unzipping the coin purse. “You take it.”
Sarah stuck out her hand. A dollar, even silver, was also uninteresting.
Buried deeper than the wallet was an envelope with my name. Inside Owen Huff reported that his father, Owen Huff senior, had recently died.
Peter read aloud:
About a dozen years back when I was in school, I went on a field trip.
I do not remember exactly where I was exactly but I found this wallet and intending to return it but being I did not know how. I’d forgotten until daddy passed away. We moved around a lot but liked to save special things and took them with us. I was cleaning out his attic and found the cute wallet in a box with the cute picture and lucky $, you better needed it. I called your last name in the phone book and they given me your address in California.
Sincerely, Owen Huff
“That’s a strange thing,” Peter pondered. “Do you remember losing your wallet when you were a child?”
“No, I kept it for years,” I admitted. “I kept it in a box. Then, something came over me one day, and I threw it away.”
Belgian Lace
Although Marguerite never worked a day in her life, she experienced the frustrations and tedium of the humdrum, workaday world. In furies and fits, she attacked gas pumps and doors. She barked at traffic signals. She raced around Atlanta, cursing her dead husband who, unlike her own father, never made enough money to hire a chauffeur.
Signal lights, however, were trivial compared to the maledictions directed at telephone operators, doctors, insurance adjusters, manicurists, repair men, stock brokers, and clerks. In the couture department at Rich’s, she was known as “code blue” (meaning anyone would rather die than have to wait on Marguerite Breen).
“If people could just do what they’re supposed to,” that was her lament. And her job, so to speak, was to let everyone know when they weren’t properly doing theirs.
This week’s grievance? The price tag on a brassiere at Neiman Marcus. “Two-hundred-and-twenty-five dollars?” Her eyebrows arched dangerously. “It’s an outrage what they think they can get away with.”
“They’re imported from Paris in France,” the salesgirl explained.
“I know where Paris is,” Marguerite seethed. “I want to speak to the buyer.”
“She’s out to lunch, ma’am.”
“Then, who’s supposed to be in charge?”
The girl disappeared behind a curtain and reappeared with a heavy-set man. “Mrs. Breen,” he greeted her affably.
“Who do you think you are? Charging $225 for a flimsy nothing?” The launch was loud enough to be heard in Shoes.
“We don’t regulate prices here,” he flushed.
“Then, I’d like you to telephone Dallas,” she said, fondling the satin bow tucked between two perfect baby-blue cups. In all her experience, first-class and worldwide, she had never seen such workmanship.
“It is the correct price, madam.” His head lifted with loyalty and pride. “See the code?”
“I see nothing but a ridiculous price tag.”
“French design, Belgian lace,” his closing argument.
“Who the hell is going to pay that?” Sportswear heard the shriek. Marguerite pounded the carpet and stomped through the wall of double glass doors. “Who?” She interrogated the parking attendant whose English wasn’t qualified to understand the question.
* * *
Dr. Cohen motioned his patient to the tobacco leather couch. “What has happened to get you so upset?”
Marguerite buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook, and her stomach rumbled with chicken salad.
Nearby, Dr. Cohen sat in the wing-chair, swinging a silver fountain pen across his knee. It usually required thirty swings for a patient to compose herself. Marguerite Breen required more. Last year, he suggested she “repress” her feelings.
“Whoever heard of a psychiatrist telling a patient to repress? Especially feelings?” my mother asked me.
A week later, when she returned to the couch, she demanded, “Do you mean I should keep the things that tear me to pieces to myself? And not let other people know what they do to me?”
Even with a medical degree from the Ivy League, the doctor could be intimidated by Marguerite. “Life might be calmer if you did.” He said, blending sympathy with caution.
“Calm is not why I was born,” she rebutted. “I am a woman of passions, Richard.” She was not about to address anyone with less than half her life experience as doctor of anything.
“You spend much of your time getting upset,” he reminded her.
“It isn’t me who’s upset. They’re upset because they fail to do anything right. It rubs off on me, that’s the problem.” Marguerite rose abruptly, brushed off her crushed silk pants, and collapsed back on the pile of cushions. “I had an awful thing happen today.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I got the letter Wednesday,” she announced. “I got the phone call this morning.”
“And?”
“Sue has not visited me in a year. Now, she informs me she’ll be coming from California for her cousin’s wedding. She’ll condescend to stop in Atlanta on the way.” Marguerite sputtered. “Sue has never cared about me. She has lived as far away as possible from me. I make the sacrifice and traipse out there, a place I hate, but she is my daughter. That’s why I make the effort.”
Marguerite gulped a glass of water and handed it to Dr. Cohen for a refill.
“She takes up with shiftless men whom she prefers to me. She has their children who do not know me, who do not call me Nana, who have no idea what I did for Sue when she was growing up.”
On two hands, Marguerite inventoried piano and ballet lessons, Girl Scouts, swimming instruction, horseback riding, summer camps, and private schools.
“Of course, I told her the truth, I can’t help that. I asked her, ‘Who in the hell wants to watch a 45-year-old woman get married?’ Then, I reminded her she can’t afford to fly across the country. She has to work, doesn’t she? She has to support those hungry kids. She doesn’t have that kind of money. I’m sure not giving it to her. Get one of her boyfriends to give it to her. I do not have it. I can’t buy a new car. I can’t take a trip this year. And today, in Neiman-Marcus I sacrificed something I wanted very badly.”
Marguerite stopped to catch her breath.
“Invited or not, I won’t be going to the wedding. ABC gum is what I told her. Already-Been-Chewed is not what normal people call ‘romantic.’ A middle-aged woman with dyed hair marrying an orthodontist with a pot belly? If that is romantic, I will shoot myself.”
“Perhaps Sue is trying to tell you something about her own choices,” Dr. Cohen offered.
“She should have thought of that when she still had her looks,” Marguerite said, twisting the skin around her fingers. “My sister struts around Atlanta like the Queen Mother. She set up a registry at Saks. Who in the hell is going to buy china and silver for a woman who has already been married? Twice!”
The doctor stood. That was his signal. Their hour togeth
er was up.
Marguerite did not like leaving Dr. Cohen. She disliked the thought of going home. Her apartment was lonely. She could think of no one to call. She had abandoned her old friends, and her new young ones weren’t so interesting after all.
“What is it?” she asked him.
“What is what?”
“I’ve forgotten, damnit.”
Forgetfulness was rare. Age had not dimmed Marguerite’s accounting abilities. In reverse of nature, anger and frustration had only served to sharpen her wits.
“When you remember, write it down,” he suggested.
“Until next week,” she said, her face deflating, the fight drained from her body.
Richard Cohen turned to his desk. Beyond the reception area, he could hear the echo of what his patient had failed to say.
“I detest this family!” she screamed. The words ricocheted in the hall as the elevator doors closed behind her.
Lucky Pleats
After several days of record-breaking heat, the temperature finally started to drop. I walked past the blocks of parched gardens to the steamy parking lot behind the grocery store. I mopped my brow, smoothed my cotton pedal pushers, moistened my lips, and sat down on a bench at the back of the store. I tried to quiet my excitement with breathing exercises I once learned for childbirth. They were useless then, useless now.
The situation, however, was comically familiar. Saturday afternoon in a public place, in a parking lot in fact, waiting for Roy as I used to wait years ago when we met in dozens of parking lots behind restaurants, bars, shops, any crowded place out of the way.
I was early, but according to habit, he was precisely on time. You could set a clock by Roy. I slipped into the car (late-model Japanese sedan). There was no temptation to slide across the seat and turn up the radio. In fact, the radio was off, and unlike his vintage Mustang convertible, the car was ordinary.
At a glance, he looked healthy and freshly showered. His eyes sparkled. The tightness in his jaw had relaxed. He wore his standard attire: tight t-shirt emblazoned with a sports logo and faded 501 jeans. The t-shirt accentuated his biceps, and I could recall them wildly pumping whenever he dashed off a set of fingertip push-ups.
As for me, despite the youthful apparel, I looked older.
I first met Roy at the local pool. Initially, there was lunch after laps, and after a few months an invitation to visit him at his studio. I brought along sandwiches and India Pale Ale, and we flopped on the floor (rather than his daybed) to watch the World Series. Halfway through the sixth inning, our restraint reached its limit. I removed my cute cowboy shirt and threw it across the room. In another minute, he threw me onto the narrow bed. And my wonderful, agonizing affair with a married man officially began.
It was Roy who first took me to the track, taught me to read the form, fronted my first bets, and showed me how to translate subtleties into temperament. I learned to sort out the winning attributes: excited but not excitable, proud but not haughty, eager but not nervous, responsive but not servile. In the cheap races, I could spot a good horse going downhill. In the high stakes, I had a sharp eye for newcomers. And like everybody, I sometimes disregarded the form and bet on whim, proving that chance (unless you had an insider tip) was as powerful as reason.
Whenever Roy and I had an opportunity to travel, we favored places with tracks. After a winning day at Gulfstream, we checked into The Biltmore (Coral Gables), a baroque hotel built in the 1920s. That night was the only occasion I ever saw him wear anything remotely formal: a wrinkled manilla linen jacket over a wrinkled white shirt. The jacket fit poorly, but it didn’t matter. Roy possessed an air of confidence that always made him look as if he were in the right place at the right time.
As for me, I wore the same lucky dress that I always wore to the races. A navy nylon shirtwaist with flocked polka-dots, accordion-pleated skirt, and rhinestone barrel-shaped buttons. I unearthed it in an Oakland thrift store. Pure vintage ’50s like Roy. Every chapter of our romance mimicked the love songs we listened to as kids. Roy was the high school quarterback, and I was the queen on the float.
After a few blocks, I commented, “Like old times.”
He didn’t understand.
“Parking lots?”
He didn’t recall.
“Because you didn’t want your wife to see my car at your studio,” I chided.
Roy snickered. He and his wife were now divorced.
“Remember the hundred dollar bill I lost at the track?”
He didn’t recall that either.
It had dropped out of my pocket, but I found it wedged in a crack of asphalt and nailed the trifecta in the fifth race. The intoxication of winning was as doomed as my love for Roy. Gambler’s doom, believing it would last.
“Where should we go?” he asked me.
Since it was cooling down, I suggested a walk at the estuary. We moved slowly because of his bad knee. He talked about himself: celebrities who came to his concerts, the article in Rolling Stone, his cameo role in a stylish film.
I waffled between envy and boredom, but in the end, I forgave him. The boasting made him seem more vulnerable than vain.
After rolling through the credits of his career, he turned to the topic of his last girlfriend (from Catalonia). They had separated, too. Boasting again, he mentioned what a commotion her animal appeal had created in his neighborhood. His remarks made me sad. Rather than old, I felt replaced. Our own little legend had drifted out of Roy’s mind.
Finally, he checked on the status of my children, my job, my career. Then, he quizzed me about the races.
“I hardly go anymore. When I do, I bet on long-shots. I usually lose.” I laughed freely because we had always laughed a lot.
He pried into my private affairs.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“You?” he exclaimed, meaning I had been so good at loving him.
“I’m no longer a romantic,” I declared as proof of cure.
Instead of wise, I could tell he thought I sounded defeated. He felt sorry for me while I felt liberated. I wanted to claim I was happy, but it was obvious he wouldn’t believe me. Since we split up, he thought I had become unlucky.
After a drink, Roy returned me to the parking lot behind the grocery store. He politely took my hand. We gazed at each other, and suddenly, he dove into my neck. A shock, like guzzled whiskey, fired through me.
“Life and the track,” he began.
I brushed his cheek with a kiss and opened the car door. As for life and the track, I knew all about it. At the races, everyone was trying to outwit fortune. It was a marvelous and futile spectacle.
I stood for a moment, smiling through the open window. Roy studied me with an adoring look. He turned the key in the ignition and with an urgency, as if these words were to be our last, he cried out, “Don’t give up.”
The Finished Hem
The last year Roy and I were together, I performed a small miracle on behalf of my neighbor, Mary Chin:
To whom it may concern:
Mrs. Chin was overcharged for unnecessary work performed at your local garage. I have personally had these charges verified by my own mechanic. She was taken advantage of because of her difficulty with English. I will seek legal counseling on her behalf if you do not reimburse the unnecessary charges.
Thank you.
A month later, Mary and I received letters of apology from corporate headquarters, assuring us a check was on its way. With that news, Mary told me, “You are my best American friend.”
In Beijing, Mary had been an accountant, her husband a math teacher. In Berkeley, he washed dishes in a restaurant. She sewed piece-work at an outdoor equipment company.
Before Mary arrived from China, her elderly parents occupied the same small apartment on the third storey of our apartment house. Shabby but efficient, the balconies were crammed with plants, hibachis, and bicycles. Every evening, smells drifted up from the kitchens of the foreign families who lived below.
In September, when Mary was reimbursed for overcharges, Sarah asked me to make her a new skirt for third grade. We went to the fabric store, and I wrote a final note to Roy:
Dear Roy
Stop calling
Stop stopping by
STOP
After a dozen melodramatic break-ups and heady reunions, I was convinced I was happier without him. The empirical proof was fewer backaches and a sweeter temper.
A month later, he wrote back:
PLEASE COME to Slim’s
October 28, 9 pm, guest list
I love you. Period. Roy
His new song was the reason for the urgent invitation. It was about us, dedicated to me, and the most forlorn tune ever written. After I told him I would come, I spent two days trying on outfits in a fever of ambivalent feelings. Finally, I settled on a vintage circle skirt, a woven turquoise top, short flat boots, and a pound of silver bracelets.
Following the show, there was another note with a plane ticket to Florida where he was scheduled to start an East Coast tour. He said the song belonged to both of us. Period.
I rearranged Sarah’s carpool schedule. I lied at work. I packed a suitcase of beach clothes with the pieces of Sarah’s gingham skirt (material she’d picked out with a pattern that included a peplum waist) and flew to Miami.
Roy picked me up in a limo strewn with flowers and a portable bar stocked with Dixie cups and champagne. By the time he put me back on the plane, I had basted Sarah’s skirt.
My Life in Clothes Page 3
